The last few years of my life have been quiet — alternatively happy and discontent or simultaneously both — but all-in-all quiet, undisturbed by the wanderings of spirit that would often grip me at times when I had the most to be thankful for.

I think I am longer overdue. As I sit here, I am rocking back and forth at the hips like a mad woman with hands red from the blood of her own child.

I had a crisis of identity this weekend. Friday night very late, I started hyperventilating, sitting at attention and gesticulating wildly in my broken ergonomic desk chair, eyes moist. I felt trapped; my house lost all the familiarity and comfort that I'd enjoyed with zordac and all our friends. My whole life felt foreign to me; the last five years stretched out in front of me like a fog I'd been hiding in. Hiding from what? My body weighed on me like a lumpy exoskeleton I wanted to peel off, the real me pink and wriggling inside it.

I wanted to flee. I almost drove to Southaven to spend the night with kesterly just to get out of the house.

My eloquence shattered into jumbled, breathy phrases, I explained it all to zordac, who listened patiently and reminded me that I was in our home with our kittens. Then he fell asleep, right there, on the spare bed in my office. I felt a little relief, but I spent the next night purging and reorganizing our bedroom.

Tonight it strikes again. I lay down for a nap (I want to finish some writing for a client by the morning) and sit up again, panting. I start to wail, not cry, but moan in prolonged notes. I think that if I can match the sound bouncing around in my chest and sing it out then it will leave me. The sound is a cross between a whale's song and the sound a finger makes as it traces the rim of a brandy glass. The pitch hits just right that the sound echoes in my head and vibrates my whole body.

Ten minutes of this, zordac snoring uninterrupted beside me, and I have to get up. I'm pacing. I take all the boxes in my office and shove them to the other side of the room so I don't have to look at them while I type. I'm huffing as I march up and down the hallway, trying to calm down enough to put this into words.

I have so many healthy, good, wonderful things going on in my life and I'm so horrified of destroying them because of this wanderlust. It's not as much of an urge to go somewhere else but rather to let the real me out of this shell. It's not wanderlust but it's definitely lust, but lust for what?

I am desperately in love with a wonderful man, zordac who knows me and encourages me and wants me to be truly happy. I have loyal, fun-loving, thoughtful, intelligent friends with whom I share a rewarding and loving bond. What the hell is wrong with me?

Is this a mid-life crisis at the age of 28? Am I just desperate to feel young again even though in years I am not old? My body feels old, my body sexless sometimes.

I don't have the focus to wrangle this energy and funnel it in the right direction, into writing, into work, into something fruitful and healthy. I think the most "good" that could come of it would be a splotchily clean and organized house or breathlessness on a treadmill (which I would like to buy).

If only I had the clarity and the strength to delay this energy and restlessness so that I might put it to good use. My heart is an open and agitated but there is no one thing that I can channel it to. This whole weekend I've considered if I should start larping again, perhaps NERO Memphis where I have no history. Perhaps the escapism would help me divert this restlessness.

Your posts are always so poetic. It seems like it would be nice to actually be able to express what you are thinking and feeling. I think I do understand what you are feeling. I felt similar emotions and anxiety a few years ago. I think it is possible to have a "mid-life" crisis, or maybe a loss you youth crisis. Painting might be a very good diversion. Maybe also a road trip or something- someplace you;ve never been, no plans, no reservations, just an adventure. I don't know. That's what I would like to do though I guess I have to put my trip off for about 20 years or so. Hope your mood passes.

There are multiple turning points in a life -- hitting your 40s is just one of them. People in their mid-20s have them all the time. Quarter life crisis. It's a tumultuous time in life. People always expect so much out of people by the time they reach 26-28-30, and if we have nothing to show for it, we panic. If we do have something to show for it, we panic because maybe it's not what we SHOULD have. Then we have to take the transition from "school" to the "real working world". But what if we haven't finished school? What if the car our life is riding in is screaming down the road at a hundred miles an hour, and nothing is being accomplished? What then?

It's NORMAL for people our age to feel like this -- we just have to take hold of ourselves and get it straightened out. Some people can do it all on their own. Some people need drugs and therapy. Some people need a huge group of family and friends to help them pull it together. Some people need all of this and more.

You're not crazy, and you're not alone. You just need to discover exactly WHY you're feeling this way, and find the means to get past it.

Thank you. Thank you for helping me to put this in perspective. I keep alternatively forgetting and remembering that 2007 is the year of my 10-year high school reunion, which adds more social anxiety to this whole identity issue even when I'm not actively thinking about it.

You're right — to find a solution, I must reflect more deeply on the sources of the crisis. I'm hoping that I may use this state of mind as a tool to create healthy change in my life.

But not only that, I must decide what direction I'd like to go, conceive a destination and a mission so that I make progress. That is what has been escaping me all along is deciding where to put my endeavors and my passion.

::sigh:: This will be a long journey, hopefully I can make it a good one. ::hug::

I know how you feel, sweetie. I've been there myself recently. What am I saying? I'm still there.

Hang in there. You have many, many, MANY friends who love and care for you and want you to discover whatever your wonderful purpose on this Earth is. (If I were a betting man, I'd say it was something suitably artsy and intellectual all rolled into one; that's just who you are.

I totally support you painting again. Your drawings/paintings are lovely. When they were on the table, and at times when you weren't around, I'd just gently flip through them, admiring. It felt like a possible invasion of your privacy, but I wanted to see them enough that I was willing to look, anyway.

Come out with me, and do things. I know I don't always do things that you think you'd enjoy (they aren't always things I think I'll enjoy, either, but I do them regardless), but they provide novelty and adventure, anyway. This past weekend: Def Poetry Jam, Rodeo, India Night.

I don't know if you'd enjoy it or not, if you like workshops or not, but there is a poetry workshop in town every Thursday evening during the month of April, 6:30-7:30 pm.

The Juke Joint Festival will be held in a couple of weekends.

We can make adventures. They might be inspiring, they might be complete duds. :) They'll be interesting, regardless.

If you want a roadtrip...any interest in going to New Orleans? We can visit Jonathan and do lots of neat things down there.

And you are sexy. Most of the time you seem beautiful, confident, and strong, with a little coyness in there that alternates with bawdiness...that's how it appears to me. I may be a little biased, because I'm your friend, but that's not the only lens through which I see you.